1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to containers designed for shipping film. More particularly, the invention concerns a cost-effective shipping container designed to carry theatrical release prints and the method of using the container in the transport and platter mounting of the prints.
2. Discussion of the Invention
In the past, theatrical release prints were customarily mounted onto plastic film cores at the film laboratory. The mounted prints were then placed in boxes and shipped to the film depot where the prints were transferred from the core onto plastic or metal film reels. Typically, the film reels were then placed in steel shipping cases for transport to the theaters. At the theater, the film reels were removed from the shipping cases and then, often through the use of rather elaborate equipment, the film was transferred from the reels onto a large film platter for later projection.
In view of the fact that a typical motion picture requires five or six film reels, it can readily be appreciated that significant costs were involved in the prior art process of first boxing the core-mounted release prints, then shipping the boxes from the laboratory to the film depot, next removing the prints from the boxes and then finally transferring the prints to the individual film reels.
The present invention uniquely overcomes many of the drawbacks of the prior art print handling processes by eliminating several costly steps involved transporting the theatrical prints from the film processing laboratory to the theater.
More particularly, because the transport container of the invention is uniquely designed to receive the core-mounted prints directly from the processing laboratory, the cost of boxing the prints and then shipping them to the first depot is eliminated. Also eliminated is the cost of the reels themselves since the core-mounted prints are delivered directly to the theater for transfer to the film platter directly from the transport container. Because the intermediate step of transferring the core-mounted prints to the reels at the film depot and then shipping the reels to the theater is completely eliminated, the substantial labor and shipping costs involved in this step are also avoided.